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. 2025 May 3;15(1):15473.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-00215-y.

Substance use disorders, severe mental illness and risk of reoffending among women released from prison: a national cohort study

Vegard Svendsen  1 , Marianne Riksheim Stavseth  2   3 , Torbjørn Skardhamar  4 , Ingrid Amalia Havnes  3   5 , Anne Bukten  2
Affiliations

Substance use disorders, severe mental illness and risk of reoffending among women released from prison: a national cohort study

Vegard Svendsen et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Women with a clinical history of a severe mental illness (SMI) or multiple mental disorders involving substance use disorder (SUD) might be at increased risk of re-offending after release from prison. This retrospective cohort study merged data from the Norwegian prison release study (nPRIS) with other registry sources. All women released from a Norwegian prison between 2011-2019 were followed for two years after date of release. Adjusting for several known risk factors, we used logistic regression to estimate risk of violent (VR), drug-related (DR) or other reoffending (ORE) after release among women with a history of SUD and severe mental illness (SUD-SMI), SMI, SUD and other mental illness (SUD-OMI) or a history of multiple SUDs (POLY-SUD) in comparison to a reference population with no history of such disorders or combination of disorders. Relative to the reference population, after adjusting for other relevant risk factors, women with a history of SUD-SMI (ORVR 2.27, 95% CI 1.37-3.76; ORDR 2.10, 95% CI 1.49-2.95), SUD-OMI (ORVR 1.81, 95% CI 1.11-2.47; ORDR 1.53, 95% CI 1.11-2.10) or POLY-SUD (ORVR 1.87, 95% CI 1.04-3.31; ORDR 2.51, 95% CI 1.80-3.49) were at significantly greater risk of violent and drug-related reoffending. Women with a history of SMI were at significantly greater risk of other reoffending (ORORE 2.64, 95% CI 1.21-5.30). Women with a clinical history of a severe mental illness (SMI) or multiple mental disorders involving substance use disorder (SUD) have an elevated risk reoffending.

Keywords: Dual disorders; Prison; Psychiatric comorbidity; Recidivism; Substance use disorders; Women’s health.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Ethics: The study was approved by the Regional Committees for Medical Research Ethics South East Norway (2012/140) and was approved as being exempt from informed consent. Data files were linked by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, which also created and stored the linkage code. All the methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations (such as Declaration of Helsinki).

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